New Delhi: At least 93 people, including 14 police officials, were killed across Bangladesh on Sunday (August 4) as student protesters clashed with activists from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League.
Sunday marked the first day of the non-cooperation movement announced by the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement.
The Interior Ministry declared an indefinite nationwide curfew from 6 pm (1200 GMT), in the first such move since the protests started.
The demonstrations broke out in June against a controversial quota system for public sector recruitment, which the country’s Supreme Court has now all but scrapped.
Students returned to the streets this week in huge numbers, in an all-out non-cooperation movement aimed at paralysing the government and demanding Hasina’s resignation.
What happened on Sunday?
Large groups of protesters packed into Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square, with street battles erupting at multiple locations in the capital as well as in other cities, police said.
Protest organisers had urged people not to pay taxes and utility bills and not show up for work in a show of “non-cooperation” with the government.
Sunday is a working day in Bangladesh but many shops and banks in Dhaka stayed closed.
At one stage, thousands of protesters attacked a major public hospital in Dhaka’s Shahbagh area, torching several vehicles, the police said.
A police officer, who asked not to be named, told the French AFP news agency that “the whole city has turned into a battleground.”
In the capital’s Uttara neighborhood, police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of protesters who blocked a major highway.
At least 24 people were killed and dozens were injured across the country, according to a tally by DW based on hospital, police and local media sources.
The death toll included two people who were declared dead from their injuries on arrival at a hospital in Munshiganj district near Dhaka, a hospital official said.
